I Saw What Should Be Valued Above All Else
by hybridphoenix
Summary: What did Jake choose?Cassie or the world?(Book 41)Chapter 2:What would Visser One have done in the Visser Chronicles if the Animorphs hadn't turned up at that critical time?
1. What I Valued Above All Else

**I Saw What Should Be Valued Above All Else...**  
  
Summary: What did Jake choose? Cassie or the world? This starts with the first page or so of the original (page 139 of #41:The Familiar), and ends with the final part. The start and end of the book-taken-portion will be marked with italics.  
  
_Marco towered above, triumphant. Eyes fixed on the holograms. Fists clenched.  
  
A scream!  
  
Cassie! Hurled through the opening, into the red night!  
  
BAAAM!  
  
He struggled, resisted. Tried to choke me. Cut off my air.  
  
BAAAM!  
  
I smashed him again. His kicking slowed. His grip loosened.  
  
He dropped to the floor, his green hearts spitting blood through severed vessels.  
  
I looked at the window. Cassie.  
  
And then, somehow, crazily...a hand reached up. Three fingers gripped the ledge. Cassie's hand. She wasn't gone! But in seconds she would tumble to her sixty-storey death, a splattered heap for Taxxons to lick up.  
  
In seconds the moon ray would fire, shooting from the Chrysler Building cannon with perfect aim and precision.  
  
Cassie's hand.  
  
The large, red button standing out on Marco's control panel, shielded behind glass. The word ABORT etched on the cover.  
_  
"Save the world. Or Cassie. One or the other. Not both." Tobias's words echoed in my mind as time seemed to slow down, my brain working at a suddenly sluggish pace, pushed to the limit by the things that had happened. Rachel. Almost dead, due to my negligence and complacency. Marco, once my best friend, now my worst enemy, all his plans, strategies and the like used on the other side. Ax, a controller. How could it be? How were the Andalites captured? I knew that they would have all killed themselves with their tails long before the Yeerk could have a chance to control them...how? Tobias too. Another who had ceased to care, in the desperate struggle against Yeerk total domination, had become more like the Yeerks than anything else. They only needed me for what I was. Not who I was. Wasn't everybody?  
  
Cassie. Once my pillar of support, the only spark of humanity in the ruthlessness I was forced to go through as the leader of the Animorphs, the one who helped me believe that somehow, all the sacrifices we made, everything we did, was worthwhile. Now, she had been twisted, by the Yeerk in her head, into an instrument of ruthless brutality. Another casualty. How many more? If I cared to cast my eye from the building, I would see thousands, millions in this slavery.  
  
Time was running out. Always my greatest enemy, it's ever tightening hands never failing to force me to make a decision, some that I didn't want to make. Like the one that caused all this. If only I had decided not to go do that mission...But once again, it was challenging me. Taunting me, to escape once more from it's ever tightening fist. A final test. Could I pass?  
  
In the few desperate seconds I had left, I formulated a plan. One that proved Tobias wrong. One that could do both. At a cost.  
  
0:00:05  
  
0:00:04  
  
I leaped...shattering through the glass with a massive tiger paw, pressing the SELF-DESTRUCT button instead of the ABORT one. A mandatory addition to all Yeerk technology, in case the EF or the 'Andalite bandits' came to wreak havoc. All would be destroyed, including the intruder. The effect was instantaenous. The entire Yeerk force present burst into an uproar, and Marco, no, Visser Two, was trying rather fruitlessly to control them.  
  
I glanced over at Cassie. Still there. For how long? How long could that three fingers last? In that fraction of a second, I made my decision. To do what I had to do. I pounced, and at that very moment, the three fingers precariously holding Cassie to the ledge released. As if some greater being had orchestrated the operation all along, I just managed to catch the falling Cassie in my paws. Turning my self so that my back would face the ground so far away, I saw, for a fleeting moment, Cassie's face. Smiling and happy, kind and wise, like the person I knew once. And as I fell, I knew I was finally atoning for my mistake.  
  
_INTERESTING CHOICE.  
  
All was blackness when I heard the voice.  
  
A strange voice. Old and young. Male and female. Echoing in my mind like distant thought-speak.  
  
It was not the Ellimist. No. It was a voice I'd never heard.  
  
THEY HAVE STRANGELY SEGMENTED MINDS: CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS, AND AN ABILITY TO RECONCILE BOTH.THEY WILL BEAR MORE STUDY, THESE HUMANS...  
  
A bird's song.  
  
Bright sun on my face. Warmth.  
  
I opened my eyes.  
  
A wooden desk with a computer on it. Star Wars Episode I poster tacked to the wall. School-books heaped on the floor. Dirty clothes falling from the closet. Worn gym shoes. Reading light. Cotton sheets.  
  
Downstairs, the smell of fresh waffles cooking. Dad. A woman talking about a doubles game. Mom.  
  
My room. My house. My...  
  
I leaped out of bed.  
  
The Schwarzenegger thing was history. My hand was my hand again. I brushed my chin. No sandpaper. Just smooth.  
  
I grabbed for the phone. I dialed the number. Pounded the keypads. My body ached in muscles I didn't know I had.  
  
Brrrr-ing.  
  
Come on. Pick up.  
  
Brrrr-ing.  
  
Answer!  
  
I wanted to hear a girl's voice. Deep and young. Cheerful and wise.  
  
My heart pounded.  
  
Bright sun washed my body. I moved a hand over my chest and felt...  
  
My badge! I yanked it off.  
  
I looked.  
  
My fingers clutched air. I opened my fist. Nothing.  
  
Images still flashed through my face.  
  
Dead Hork-Bajir towering above me.  
  
Orffs manacling my wrists.  
  
David.  
  
A mind-blowing explosion.  
  
The Howler.  
  
The strangely beautiful singing of children.  
  
The stench of those condemned to death.  
  
A Mylar sheath beating with the wind.  
  
The scarred faces and mangled bodies of old friends.  
  
Elfangor.  
  
Lightning. Rain. Slipping...  
  
Brr...  
  
"Hello?"  
  
Time stopped.  
  
Everything got extremely quiet. Except for the pounding of my heart.  
  
I knew now. I'd made a choice. I knew what I was made off. My limitations and priorities.  
  
"It's Jake," I said.  
  
No response.  
  
"It's Jake," I said again, voice quaking like I'd never talked to her before.  
  
As if this were the first call I'd ever made. The only call that ever mattered.  
  
"Cassie, I just wanted to ask what I should have asked you yesterday. Are you okay?"  
  
_


	2. Life vs Love

Chapter 2-Love vs. Life  
  
(A/N-This is the next part of possible solutions to all the dilemmas Applegate has in her books. The first came from #41 The Familiar. This comes from the Visser Chronicles. Quotes will be in italics. And by the way, I don't own Animorphs. Unfortunately.)  
  
_I held the gun.  
  
And Darwin, my son, calmly took the barrel in his right hand and pressed it against his own heart.  
  
I understood. Darwin was a Controller. The Yeerk inside his brain was holding his gun so that I couldn't spin around and shoot Visser Three. Holding the gun so that the only person I could kill was Darwin.  
  
The Yeerk's host body would die, my son would die. The Yeerk might be rescued in time. It was dangerous for him, though. Visser Three must have threatened him terribly to get him to do this.  
  
I looked at my son, the features that were a unique blend of Allison's Korean physiology and Hildy's French physiology. The eyes, the hair, were Allison's. The skin was pale, the mouth wide, were Hildy's.  
  
Nothing of me, of course. How could there be? And yet, this child would not have existed but for me. Surely that made me in some part his mother.  
  
I struggled to control my facial expressions. I was helped by the injuries. I had seen myself in the mirror; my right eye always seemed to be crying now.  
  
Darwin a controller. His sister? My daughter? Where was Madra? Where was my little girl, named for the bright, tiny, moon of the Yeerk home world?  
  
The gun was trembling in my hand. Pull the trigger. It was all I had to do. I would be free. Visser Three had staked everything on this one showdown.  
  
If I refused I would be beyond even Garoff's power to save.  
  
Perhaps Visser One is unfamiliar with the operation of the weapon, Visser Three smirked. That seems unlikely in the extreme, but just to refresh her memory, you pull the trigger, Visser. Just pull the trigger!   
  
You can't do this, Edriss, Eva said.  
  
I have no choice! They'll kill me!   
  
Once before you chose your life over love. Are you happy with the result?   
_  
That was true. Choosing my life a visser over love and a happy life with Essam had led me to this. Forced to shoot my own son. I was not supposed to care. I did. Cared so deeply that I knew my heart was practically torn into two, in human terms, even though I had no evidence that the human heart could be torn apart so easily. I assumed it was a metaphorical term at the time, but now, I knew. It could. My heart was throbbing, like a pump pumping the deadly adrenaline through every vein of my body. For the first time, I truly understood the term "torn apart".  
  
Once, I had played the game humans called chess. It was a strategy game, in which the objective was to force the opposing side's king into defeat, or 'checkmate'. I had learnt, in my study of human history, that the game had been played by ancient kings. Ironically, this was a game that had become reality. Two kings. Victory was in my grasp. All I had to do was sacrifice Darwin, one of the countless pawns in my possession and it would be checkmate. Visser Three's seemingly erroneous claim would be proven wrong. I would survive. And he would not. Just one pull...  
  
If it were a real chess game, I would have seen the solution, and done it without any hesitation. There is no room in chess for mercy. This was not chess. It was the real world, where love, although I hate to admit it, shook my resolve. I knew that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Just like when I had tried, over and over, to convince myself that I did not care for the kids. Did not care for Essam. Yet I did...  
  
Where was Marco? If I were to escape alive from this situation, the only person who could see that happen was Marco. His cavalier dismissal of my desperate proposal had shocked me to the core. I had thought that he would do anything to save his mother, even one that wasn't really his mother, but a Visser, but I was wrong. He saw the straight line of ruthlessness, like when he set up the plot to get rid of me and Visser Three. But he couldn't bring himself to let me die without letting me discover. That thread of weakness was what I was depending on. He was human, after all. But I was still helplessly, hopelessly alone.  
  
And it was all my fault. All of it. I could have just aborted the babies. I knew that I was falling in love with Essam's could have exercised more self-control. I could have seen through Marco's ploy, if I had not been overwhelmed by my desire to destroy Visser Three. I could have, could have...  
  
I gave myself a mental slap. I had to convince the council (and Visser Three) that I was not a traitor. Essentially, lie to them. And in the process, I had to keep Darwin's life. How?  
  
And then it struck me. I did not mind being branded a traitor. I just did not want to die the death of one-Kandrona starvation. That realization pointed out something else. Another idea. The only viable plan. SHOOT! Visser Three roared. Or at least I think he did, since everything had subsided into a low roar all around me. My brain had gone into overdrive. But the solution had been found. And it depended on one person. Darwin.  
  
I swerved. Hoping, desperately hoping that the shock, combined with the strength of the little momentum I could muster, would be enough for him to release it. He did. He was a nine-year-old, after all. How much strength did he have in those tiny fingers of his? Visser Three, in his glee that he had come up with a plan that had a 0.01% chance of working, must have been too glad posturing to remember that Darwin's body was that of a child and just wasn't as strong as the adult human morph he had.  
  
At that moment, time crawled to a stop. Visser Three's tail arced across the air, towards me. Getting closer and closer with every second. The Hork-Bajir around trained their Dracon beams at me. Facing Visser Three, I did what he had wanted me to do. Pulled the trigger. Of course, he wouldn't have wanted the bullet to be going through his head. Point-blank range. That deadly tail, together with the rest of him, fell to the floor, milliseconds before he decapitated me. With that accomplished, I placed the gun, with almost deadly calm, against my temple. The Hork-Bajir all around me closed in, on orders to take me alive, which was not going to happen.  
  
No. I am not. I told Eva.  
  
And pulled the trigger.  
  
(A/N-How's that? Please review, and tell me if there's any way I can improve, whether in my technique or ideas. Thanks to all the people who have been reading and reviewing my stories!) 


	3. If only You knew

A/N-Chapter 3 of the I Saw What Should be Valued Above All Else series! This has a slightly supernatural take on it, and partially emphasizing the fact that love transcends all barriers. About Marco's decision, but from Visser One's POV. Will be slightly different from the rest of my stories, but please read and review!  
  
**If Only You Knew...**  
  
Marco. The boy Marco, that I thought would never amount to anything great because he was too sweet and trusting, lunged. I struggled. For the first time in a long while. I fought for my Dracon beam. Pulled the trigger. In a few seconds he would die. My host's son would die. I waited for the Dracon beam to impact. For the scream that would come from his pain. Then Eva would despair. Who wouldn't?  
  
But it never came. That tiger had pushed him back in the nick of time. I stood my ground, with my mind frantically thinking, my heart desperately pumping. No way out. I was surrounded. If I could do anything, it was to kill one of the 'Andalite' bandits that I now knew were not andalite. At least, not totally. But what would be the point? If I killed them, it would make Visser Three's job to conquer Earth easier. I didn't mind, but my children, Darwin and Madra, would die. Trembling fingers moved the Dracon beam and brought it to bear, facing the ground. Once I fired, I would fall, and perhaps be saved by a Yeerk ship, and at least spared the indignity of losing to the 'Andalite' bandits and worse, my host's son.  
  
As I pulled the trigger. I fell. Into empty nothingness. Probably a fifty-foot drop at the very least. After all, they all wanted to see me dead. Might as well be sure to bring me to the highest peak they could find, right? They weren't stupid, after all.This is the end,I told myself,this is the end.Eva crowed.Now I'll finally be free of you.  
  
I fell into a pit, saw darkness all around me. Then, something soft, which broke my fall. An excruciating pain ran up my arm. Broken. I was in pain, but I was alive. The pit was not too difficult for even a human host with a broken arm to climb out of. Ignoring the ache in my arm, I started climbing. One step. One hold. I winced in pain. Eva crowed in laughter. The process repeated itself, countless times.  
  
Step,hold,wince,crow.  
  
Step, hold, wince, crow.  
  
Step, hold, wince, crow.  
  
At last, with my good arm, I scrambled over the pit's surface. Out of curiosity, I peered down at the pit, to see what had broken my fall. What I saw nearly made me fall into the pit again. It was the goat. Marco. He was dead. Eva wept, and I could feel her sorrow coming in waves. But how? He couldn't have jumped in after me, for we would have fell at the same speed. Simple rules of gravity. It didn't change the nagging question. How could he be there?It may be just a goat that was wandering around and fell into the pit. Don't scare yourself.Then, I took a second look. One of its legs was missing. In its place, there was a hand. A human hand. Then I knew. Marco had somehow jumped down and managed to save me.  
  
I did a mock bow in front of his dark grave. It would make Eva mad. Predictably, she cried. I laughed at her, a shrill mocking laugh. Then I pulled myself together, and left.  
  
A Few Days Later  
  
I decided to check for the death of the boy. Marco. Maybe I would go to his funeral, or stand somewhere far out of sight and observe the proceedings. Perhaps he deserved it, after he saved my life. I did not reveal their secret, that part of them were not 'Andalites'.Consider that as your debt repaid. Your pathetic band will survive. Go on and trouble Visser Three,   
  
On the last day that I was to be on Earth, I was called for a meeting with Visser Three. I got a human-Controller to drive me to the facility. The Sharing. Probably had degenerated from perfect to inadequate under his incompetent care. I entered the car. "You know where the facility is. Drive."I snapped. He immediately obeyed, turning the ignition, and starting to drive. I stared derisively out of the window. Someday, all of you will become ours. I thought. Then, I saw a boy. Familiar. It was he. It was Marco." STOP!" I yelled. The car screeched to a halt. "Yes, Visser?" the frightened Controller asked, quaking in the boots he wore." You have missed the facility," I retorted calmly. "It is over there." The truth. He had forgotten where the facility was. As he looked around, I saw him. It was Marco, without any doubt.  
  
After the meeting, which was another of the many opportunities Visser Three had to showcase his lack of ability and obsequiousness to the Council, I took out a human laptop. Accessed the Internet, another primitive system humans had invented. A passage said that at extreme times, a person could split into two, and do literally two things at a time. Following it were some testimonies by humans. Then, I knew.  
  
Marco...Did you feel like a part of you died when you saw me fall off the cliff? If you felt so, you did. You are one of the few humans with such...interesting capabilities. For now, I can only say, "If only You knew..."  
  
A/N-I know it's kind of short and undeveloped, but I'll improve on it when I have time, ok? Please review and point out the areas in which I can improve! 


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